Abstract
Despite growing debate about the role of monuments in diverse societies, there has been insufficient attention to contestations that have emerged involving ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ monuments. This article examines the politics of inclusion and exclusion that can stem from the social practices that evolve around these monuments, particularly as the imperatives and priorities of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) activism evolve while monuments, created in a particular historical and geographical context, are in some sense ‘set in stone’. Drawing on an intensive, mixed-methods case study of the Homomonument in Amsterdam, the article develops a grounded critique of processes of inclusion and exclusion specifically in relation to Black, bisexual and transgender people. With a focus on dance parties organised at the Homomonument, the article calls for more research that analyses monuments as sites of practice.
Highlights
There has been considerable recent debate regarding the role that fixed public monuments play in increasingly diverse societies (e.g. Orangias et al, 2018; Stevens and Franck, 2015; Zebracki and Leitner, 2021)
We provide these insights at a time when there is mounting critique of static notions of gay identity and the marginalisation of transgender people within movements labelled as LGBTQ1 (e.g. Ghaziani et al, 2016), and the perceived whiteness of LGBTQ organising and politics (e.g. Hinkson, 2021; Ward, 2008b), amongst other issues
Similar to how existing organisations adapted to expanding gay and lesbian activism, we identify a widening politics of inclusion and exclusion that revolves around our case on monuments for sexual/gender minorities
Summary
There has been considerable recent debate regarding the role that fixed public monuments play in increasingly diverse societies (e.g. Orangias et al, 2018; Stevens and Franck, 2015; Zebracki and Leitner, 2021). Issues around visibility and recognition are intensifying in debates about how to commemorate, and establish space for, sexual and gender minorities (Castiglia and Reed, 2011; Gieseking, 2016; Gorman-Murray and Nash, 2016) These debates render queer politics of inclusion as an activist commitment to creating (more) public visibility of such minorities as key pathway to heighten their recognition including formal rights – though such processes do not follow uniform patterns (Dunn, 2017; Mekler, 2018; Zebracki, 2020). The question that, in our case, emerges is how the Homomonument – through the lens of dance parties as situated social practice – adapts to a dynamic queer community within the context of the Dutch urban capital
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